


We Need to Talk About Renly

by catherineflowers



Series: We Need To Talk About ... [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, F/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 00:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14581290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: “Renly Baratheon is Cersei’s brother-in-law. Robert’s brother. Robert took out a restraining order forbidding me to go within 500 yards of pretty much anyone with the surname Baratheon.”“Oh.”“Oh indeed. So I’m going home before he sees me and I end up back in fucking jail!”





	We Need to Talk About Renly

**1\. Brienne**

He grabs her arm. 

She’s just frisking someone, a drunk girl, checking her for weapons or drink before she gets into the club, just doing her job, when suddenly, Jaime appears behind her and grabs her arm.

He’s wild-eyed, frantic, shouting incoherently over the thumping music. Trying to pull her out of the building. She motions to her colleague to take over and follows him out of the lobby, down the steps into the freezing night air.

It’s started to snow, and she’s dressed only in a tank.

He was supposed to be at the bar, having a drink. Celebrating the end of his parole, the end of his tag. Celebrating moving in together. She had another hour left of her shift and then they were going out for food. Then they were going home to bed.

“Did you see him?” he shouts as soon as they cross the threshold. “In the VIP area?”

“Who? Which one?”

“Dark hair. Beard. With a guy with blonde curls.”

“Oh - that sounds like Ren.”

“Yes. Renly Baratheon.”

“You know him? He owns the club. He’s my boss.”

He blanches. “Your boss?!”

“Yeah, Ren. We’ve talked about him. Lots of times.”

“You didn’t tell me your boss was Renly Baratheon.”

“Didn’t I?”

“No! Are you trying to get me arrested?”

Now she’s really confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Renly Baratheon is Cersei’s brother-in-law. Robert’s brother. Robert took out a restraining order forbidding me to go within 500 yards of pretty much anyone with the surname Baratheon.”  


“Oh.”

“Oh indeed. So I’m going home before he sees me and I end up back in fucking jail!”

**2\. Jaime**

The snow is laying, getting thicker. He stomps through it, through the streets, freezing cold. He left his jacket in the club and he has a long way to walk. He doesn’t have the money for a cab.

Inside, he’s absolutely screaming, boiling over with a black shadow of rage. He wants to kick things, break them. Smash the face of anyone who looks at him. He wants to hurt Brienne.

Only he doesn’t. He wants to hurt Cersei. Grab her hair, slap her face, knock some teeth out. Wrap his hands around her pale white throat and choke the life from her. Now, even now, she’s poisoning everything good he has.

Even his first night out. Just a beer in a club while he waited for Brienne. Something they’d looked forward to, something they’d planned together.

The beer comes up again in a torrent of vomit – he leans against the nearest wall and throws it all up, narrowly missing his shoes. He’s not drunk. He’d barely had half. He just needs to get it out of him, get it gone, get home. Back under a rock like the deviant he is.

**3\. Brienne**

Brienne takes a cab. Pretends she’s been struck by a sudden migraine and leaves work early. 

She sits forward in the cab’s back seat, scouring the streets for him as they pass. In the snow, there’s barely anyone about – a couple of women heading towards a bar, singing with their arms around each other, and some drunk, throwing his guts up in the street.

She gets back to their new place, knowing that he couldn’t possibly have got back yet. Pays the cab and hovers on the steps outside, hoping to spot him, hoping he’ll just be coming round the corner.

It gets too cold and she has to go inside.

**4\. Jaime**

His keys were in his jacket, as was his phone. He gets the neighbour to buzz him in and climbs the seven flights of stairs to their front door, intending to sit outside until she gets home.

There are footprints on the doormat, wet from snow. Large ones.

He knocks on the door and she opens it at once, a cigarette in her mouth and relief all over her face.

He’s sorry. Unbelievably, insanely sorry. He can’t describe the sensation he felt inside that club, seeing Renly Baratheon, the risk of arrest, of going back to prison. The hand of Cersei everywhere he turns. It felt like choking. It felt like dying. It felt like he was already dead.

He knows Brienne didn’t know, he knows she would never have put him in danger.

He holds her tight and mutters his apologies into the soft warmth of her neck. And then the tears come. Frustrated, bitter tears – he hasn’t cried on her shoulder in months now, things have been so much better, he’s been so much stronger.

She puts her cigarette out and leads him into their new bedroom.

**5\. Brienne**

They don’t have a bed yet - it’s on order from somewhere on the other side of the country - only a mattress on the polished wooden floor. It’s piled with cushions at the moment, from where they sat and watched TV together this afternoon.

No drapes yet either – she turns the light out so the street can’t see them. The moonlight shines on the crisp white snow – the room has a gentle, star-soft glow that feels like something magical. Something fantastical. 

He’s trembling slightly as she pulls his shirt off, cold and wet from his walk in the snow, overwhelmed and overloaded from all that’s going on inside his head. She tugs her tank off over her head and holds him, naked skin to naked skin. Sharing her warmth, breathing his breath.

They kiss and part, kiss and part, slowly sinking into the pile of cushions. She opens his trousers with a slow hand, using the other to hold his chest down.

She frees him from his pants and dips her head to take him in her mouth, enjoying the way his breath catches as she slides her teeth across the sensitive head of his cock. Before long, she has him groaning and gasping, holding her head, lifting his hips to thrust into her mouth. Telling her she’s amazing, telling her never to stop, telling her he loves her, he loves her, he loves her …

He comes with a thick cry, shooting a copious load into her mouth and then pulling her to him for a kiss so they can share the taste. It’s perverse, it’s egotistical. It’s Jaime. She loves how much she’s in love with Jaime.

**6\. Jaime**

In the shower afterwards, he returns the favour. They have a big, walk-in shower now – plenty of room to get on his knees in front of her.

He loves watching her while he does this, watching the serious concentration on her face, her furrowed brow, her bitten lip. Watching the flush creep up her body to her face and finally, finally, taking her over the edge and hearing her cries echo off the tiles.

She collapses, sated and exhausted, into his embrace. They dry off on big new fluffy white towels and head to bed together once again.

**7\. Brienne**

He has the TV on, as he always does at night time. Flicking from channel to channel, something to distract and calm him.

She is snuggled up and dozing softly, face nuzzled in his neck, kissing his long damp hair.

Then suddenly, he speaks.

“You have to leave.”

“What?”

“Renly. You can’t work for Renly any more.” 

“Why?”

“Because Cersei will twist it. If they know I’m dating you then they’ll make it look like I’ve done it deliberately to get close to her. They’ll make it look like I’ve violated the restraining order.”

“It’s a loose connection. You’d have to be crazy ….”

“Oh they’re very good at making me look like a crazy man. A stalker. A rapist.” He looks away, his eyes narrow. “I can’t go back to prison.” 

“Jaime, I need that job.”

“You don’t.” He gestures around him, at their new apartment. Their new things. “I have my trust fund.”

“What kind of arsehole lives off their boyfriend’s trust fund?”

He snorts and makes a face. “Erm … Renly?”

“He has his clubs!”

“How do you think he paid for them? He didn’t, his boyfriend did. Trust me, I’ve known him since he was a spotty kid, and he’s a prick. You don’t want to work for him.”

“I told you about Ren. I thought you understood. He saved me. It was him who found me after I was raped. He cared for me. Took me to hospital, paid my medical bills. Paid for all my therapy. He gave me a job.”

“It doesn’t mean he owns you, Brienne.”

“I know that. But he’s a good man. The best.”

“You sound like you’re in love with him!” 

That crosses a line. She gets up. Moves away from him. Put her clothes on. She needs a cigarette.

When she turns back to find her lighter, he is looking at her with his mouth open. “You are! You know he’s gay, right? Pretty much pointless to fancy him, sorry.”

“I do not fancy him.”

“Is that what that job is all about? Pining after Renly, unrequited, for years?”

“I wanted to help him. Give something back. It was the best way I knew how.”

“Does he know?”

“What is this? Are you jealous, Jaime?”

“Of what? Your non-relationship with a gay man? Don’t worry, it makes perfect sense to me. It must have been very safe for you, knowing you’d never have to act on it.”

“Oh, fuck you!”

She goes out onto the balcony, slamming the French doors behind her. She has to hunker against the wall to get her cigarette lit, but she smokes it furiously. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to be at all.

**8\. Jaime**

He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the cushions on the bed. He sees Brienne smoking outside in the swirling blizzard, her eyes furrowed and hidden in shadows.

He can already see how this would play out in court, and he’d be utterly defenceless. He can’t see his father paying for a lawyer now either – Senator Lannister has to be seen to be taking poor abused Cersei’s side.

Brienne comes in again, but doesn’t speak. Doesn’t look at him. She heads for the kitchen – he hears her banging and crashing in the cupboards, angrily.

He pulls his pants on and goes to stand in the kitchen doorway. She’s cooking something on the stove, canned soup he thinks, her mouth set in a sullen line.

“I hope you’re going to apologise,” she snaps.

“We shouldn’t argue about things like this. It’s not worth it ... not over Renly Baratheon. Listen – why don’t we leave the city? Or the country. For a few months, maybe a year? This place will still be here. But we could get away from all this – this poison. It wouldn’t be a problem when we’re an ocean away from it.”

“And conveniently, I would have to leave my job to do that, wouldn’t I.”

“There’s a whole world out there. Let’s see it together. We could even get a boat! Sail away together, get married –“

“How dare you!” 

“What?!”

“How dare you use marriage to try to – bend me to your will. I’m not some airhead who can be bought away from her loyalties with the promise of a diamond!”

“A sapphire, actually.”

“What?”

She turns around, to see him holding it in his hand. A box. A small one, black velvet.

Her eyes go to his, as wide and blue as the ring inside the box. She starts to speak, but her mouth moves uselessly. She closes it again.

“I’m not using it as a carrot. I was going to ask you tonight, when we went out for dinner.”

She’s dumbstruck – her eyes move between him and the ring box.

“What do you think?” he asks eventually.

She closes her eyes. She looks weary. Beaten.

“I don’t know,” she says at last.

**9\. Brienne**

She eats her soup in the kitchen, by herself. Jaime’s back in bed, watching the TV again - some late-night shopping channel by the sounds of it.

He took the ring away with him, without a word. His head bowed, his hair falling into his eyes so she couldn’t see what was in them.

Outside, it seems as though the snow has stopped falling, though it’s settled deep. It’s calming, watching the spindrift circle lazily in the wind.

She loves him. She loves him and she’s hurt him, which hurts her deeply. But he’s been so angry lately, so volatile and full of rage. Sarcastic and mocking too, which she doesn’t deserve. She’d put it down to part of his recovery, perhaps a stage of grief.

Tonight should have been a turning point – his first night of freedom after the removal of his tag. 

Clearly, he had thought the same.

Brienne clears her dishes and then goes to find him in the bedroom. He’s sleeping, curled among the cushions, his good hand still wrapped around the ring box. The TV talks to itself, casting ghost-blue light around the walls, across the naked skin of his back and chest.

She sits beside him carefully – knowing what it takes for him to fall asleep, she doesn’t want to wake him. She takes the ring box from his sleep-loose fingers, opens it up. Even in the low light, the sapphire glitters. It’s a big stone, but it’s somehow understated and simple at the same time. She loves it – it’s perfectly her.

Suddenly, she is aware that his eyes are open. He’s looking at her, looking at the ring. “Don’t tell me you’re considering the worst proposal ever made?” 

She doesn’t say anything.

“It was stupid of me. I apologise. I’ve spent too long surrounded by the venal and corrupt. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was trying to buy you.”

“I did love Ren,” she says eventually. Eyes on the ring. “And yes, of course I knew he liked men, I’m not an idiot. And maybe it was a safe choice, but after what had happened, after what I’d been through, what’s wrong with feeling safe?”

Jaime drops his head. “Nothing,” he whispers.

“You don’t need to be jealous. Meeting you – being with you – has given me a taste of real life. Love. Companionship. Sex. You’ve given me so much that Ren could never give me.”

Jaime looks as though he has a dozen quips in his mouth, each more cruel than the one before. But he shrugs and simply says “I love you too.”

He kisses her. They share a smile, warm and soft.

**10\. Jaime**

He fucks her on the cushions in the blue TV screen light, staring deep into her eyes, seeing the sapphire, seeing the gold. Feeling the sweat of their bodies, feeling the grasp of her hand on his backside, urging him on, pushing him deeper.

Her breathy little sighs, her mounting pleasure. His own grunts and gasps. Loving her, being with her, not letting her go.

The ring sits in its box on the floor by the bed, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Couldn't leave these two alone! Even though it's not the nicest of universes, I just really wanted to catch up with them a few months down the line.


End file.
